End Game
by SciFiDVM
Summary: Eyal returns to help Annie. Things don't go exactly as he planned. Takes place a few months after the events of the season finale.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **End Game

**Show: **Covert Affairs

**Summary: **Eyal returns to help Annie. Things don't go exactly as he planned. Takes place a few months after the events of the season finale.

**Spoilers:** Everything through episode 3.16 – Lady Stardust

**Pairings:** Annie/Auggie, eventual Annie/Eyal

**Rating:** T

**Disclaimer:** I don't own 'em, I make no money off 'em, and I'm just playing with 'em until the fine folks at USA et al need them back next summer.

**A/N:** **Don't worry. I have not given up on Next Tuesday. The next chapter is almost ready, but this guy has been slowly simmering on my back burner since the finale and finally refused to let me work on anything else until I got it down "on paper".**

Annie heard the shot, but instead of the piercing pain of a bullet ripping through her torso she felt the pain of hitting the pavement with force and added weight on top of her. As she rolled out from under the dead weight she drew her pistol and fired on the standing form at the mouth of the alley. It went down and she rushed over to confirm that the man was not going to get back up. Once she was sure there was no pulse at the man's throat she turned and ran back over to the other man lying on his back where she had been tackled.

There was a dark splotch at the top of his abdomen that began quickly spreading across the fabric of his shirt. Annie dropped to her knees, put her hand over the wound, and pushed with all the pressure she could. The man on the ground underneath her hands groaned at the pressure.

"No. No no no no no!" She cried as the dark red fluid seeped up between her fingers. She pulled her scarf off and put it over the wound and reapplied pressure.

"What are you doing here?" She yelled at him.

"I was saving your life. Now it would appear that I am bleeding to death." Eyal coughed out weakly.

"You're not bleeding to death." She informed him, her voice full of panic as the dark crimson quickly saturated the fabric under her hands.

"I believe your blood soaked scarf says differently."

He was losing far too much blood far too quickly, and she knew it. Despite her best efforts to ward off the thoughts gathering at the forefront of her mind, she couldn't block out the realization that she was very likely about to watch him die in this alley, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"Why do you always have to be right all the time. It's really annoying." She tried to laugh as she sobbed the last few words out.

"Neshama." He whispered and reached up to wipe a tear trailing down her cheek.

She leaned into his palm. "They know where I am. Backup is on the way. You're going to be fine."

"You've always been a horrible liar." He dropped his hand back to the pavement.

"And you are supposed to be on a boat half a world away relaxing and watching the sunset."

"It just wasn't the same without you there watching it with me." He was beginning to have trouble keeping his eyes open.

"I said some day." She tried to smile at him.

"I got tired of waiting." He had no trouble smiling up at her before he closed his eyes and his mouth parted slightly.

"Eyal, stay with me!" She yelled.

He stirred slightly. "Now you ask me to stay." It came out as a choked whisper.

"All those times you've done or said something amazing, then disappeared into the crowd at an airport or train station. I've never wanted to see you go."

"I never wanted to leave you."

"Then stay. You get through this and then you stay. Stay here in DC with me as long as you like, until you're completely sick of me."

"Never going to happen."

"Sure it can." She pleaded.

"First, I'd never get sick of you." He coughed and gasped to catch his breath. "Second, I don't get to choose whether I make it through this."

"Just hang in there a little longer."

"You know how I hate good byes…"

"Don't you dare. Don't you leave me." She ordered.

"Neshama…" He whispered and tried to bring his hand to her face again, but couldn't manage to lift it anymore.

Annie kept the pressure on his wound with her right hand and used her left to lift his hand to her cheek. Holding it there she leaned down and kissed him on the lips. He returned the kiss at first, but then his body went limp quickly. She pulled back and looked at him. He was nearly white as a sheet and she didn't see him breathing. She put her fingers on his neck and felt a few faint irregular pulses against them, then nothing. She abandoned the blood soaked scarf and began CPR. Ten rapid chest compressions right over his heart, followed by two deep breaths via mouth to mouth, then repeat… and repeat and repeat and repeat…

She was still doing CPR when the red and white flashing lights illuminated the alley a few minutes later. Paramedics rushed over to her and took over. She rode in the ambulance with him and watched the men work on him in a shocked silence. When they arrived at the hospital he was wheeled directly into an OR and Annie was forced to stay behind the pair of stainless steel swinging doors with the ominous "authorized personnel only" sign. She was ushered to a waiting area and a nurse asked if she could show her to a restroom where she could get cleaned up. She looked down at her hands for the first time and found them soaked to the wrist in his blood, now dried and embedded in every little crease. She refused to wash it off. It was all she had left of him. She fished her phone out of her pocket, and before she even registered looking at the screen, Auggie's voice was in her ear and she was explaining what had happened. Then she saw a flurry of activity around the door to his OR and a few extra doctors, possibly surgeons darted in. She dropped the phone without hanging up and collapsed to her knees in the middle of the waiting room.

She lost all recognition of time. She wasn't sure when Auggie had arrived. She just vaguely registered being moved from the ground to a chair and the sensation of familiar arms around her. She clung to him and felt somewhat guilty for crying about another man onto the shoulder of her still relatively new boyfriend. The guilt was only temporary, as the overwhelming numb sadness swelled back up to displace it. She continued to cling to Auggie until she registered a soothing hand stroking her hair and down her back. She turned to find Joan in the seat next to her. Her face was sympathetic and her actions consolatory. Annie didn't know when or why the other woman had appeared, but her authoritative presence was a relief. Joan could take control of the situation like she always did, and Annie could just give in to the pain and the fear.

Annie sat in the waiting room chair, knees pulled up to her chest and Auggie's arm around her, for what seemed like an eternity. Joan intermittently got up to interrogate the hospital staff and make phone calls. Just as Annie reached the point where she couldn't stand waiting for another second, Auggie moved his hand to her shoulder.

"It's a good thing that it's taking this long. It means they still have something to work with." She realized the logic behind his words, but they did not bring her any peace.

She wondered what Eyal would tell her in this situation. Would he take her grief seriously and console her with a metaphor about how even the mightiest river currents all eventually give way and join the sea? Or would he find some way to turn this whole situation into nothing but sexual innuendo and double entendre about mouth to mouth? She snorted as she realized that she hoped for the latter. While those rare times when he opened up to her in earnest would always touch her heart, she couldn't deny that the first sensation to course through her body any time she thought of the ex-Mossad agent was anticipation for the inevitable flirty unresolved sexual tension that defined their interactions since they first met. A dozen scenes played out in sequence across her mind at that realization – Eyal stepping into a shower with nothing but a metal briefcase, the smile on his face as he held up the bondage gear from the safe house closet, witty banter after he cut in to dance with her in Paris, the expression on his face when he unexpectedly caught sight of her in that bar instead of his target, the best Sazerac in DC, how he could be partially undressed and zip-tied to a head board and still be goading her on about needing to work on her delivery, him standing outside the Jerusalem airport with a cardboard sign reading "Neshema", the way he took it as a challenge when she spurned his advances and attempts to join her in her hotel later that night, a joke about not having her phone number in a Russian alley, his hands on her face and his lips on hers in the train station, laughing over a bottle of wine and a well cooked dinner in his DC apartment, standing in the same Zurich safe house and realizing that the way he says "use me" conjures up more feelings than just de ja vu, and then finally, the certainty in his voice as he describes the sunset they will watch together someday before watching him disappear into a crowd for what she was certain would be the last time.

She smiled, because if she never sees him again, this is how she chooses to remember Eyal. He had been a teacher, a savior, a distraction, a protector, a liability, a partner, a challenge, an almost lover, and most of all, a friend. With this revelation she felt comforted, like she had steeled herself for the worst. However, it was not even a full minute later when she found out that nothing has prepared her for seeing the surgeon step out of the OR and walk towards their little group. She stood and shakily walked forward to meet him half way across the waiting room.

His face was blank after what must have been a grueling four and a half hours of surgery, and it gave nothing away as to the outcome. "I take it you are the friend of our mystery man with the GSW?" He addressed Annie.

Terror gripped her in a way she'd never felt before and she found it impossible to make the words leave her mouth. All she could do was give a slight nod. She recognized that he began to speak to her after the confirmation, but her conscious mind refused to process the words he was saying. Apparently the subconscious part of her mind was happy to proceed without her, because the next thing she registered was the sensation of her knees hitting the linoleum floor and tears streaming down her cheeks.


	2. Chapter 2

Once she had composed herself, Annie was taken in to see him. His body lay on the bed, still and unmoving. It was such a strange sight to her, because he had always been such an animated person in everything he did. She walked up to the edge of the bed and found herself nearly mesmerized by the oddity of it.

The nurse put a gentle hand on her shoulder. I'll give you a few minutes alone with him." Then she turned and left the room.

As soon as she was alone in the room she reached over softly punched his shoulder.

His frozen facial features twisted into a soft smile and he whispered, "You hit like a girl, Neshama."

The first thing he saw as he forced his eyes open was her smiling ear-to-ear.

"Well, you look like crap."

"I hear it is entirely thanks to you that I am still around to look like crap."

"You did take that bullet saving my life. It was only fair to return the favor." She reached down and took his hand. Making sure not to dislodge the IV line inserted into the back of it, she gave it a gentle squeeze.

He squeezed back with what little strength he had. "And I would do it again. Let's be honest. Look at our history. If I do decide to hang around here in DC with you for any length of time it probably will happen again." He smiled.

Annie smiled back, but he didn't miss the small amount of concern that flashed through her eyes. "So you remember all that?"

"You didn't lie to me just because you thought I was dying, did you?"

She started to stutter out a response, but he interrupted her with a subdued chuckle. "Don't worry. I knew all about you and Anderson before I came here. I won't get in your way."

"You knew and you still came?"

"Of course."

"But why?"

"When I heard that an American woman had accessed a certain safe deposit box in an Athenian bank using the pass code 5-1-0-4-1 I knew that you were in trouble, or would be soon enough."

"That was a clever trick the way you planted the information about that code when we were in that train station."

"I had sincerely hoped you would never have to use it. But since you did, I know what you are working on. This Henry Wilcox was no stranger to Mossad. My previous involvement in any missions, long before we met, that traced back to that man consorting with Israel and Mossad almost always left a trail of bodies and destruction in their wake. This most recent is no exception."

"I'm working it off the books. I can keep everything under control."

"This is big Annie. Bigger than you know. Bigger than you and Auggie will be able to handle on your own."

Annie opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by an unexpected voice from the doorway.

"It will be especially hard to handle on our own when she hasn't told me anything about it." Auggie's voice was hurt and angry.

"How long have you been standing there?" Annie spun to face him and asked, terrified.

"Long enough." Then he turned and disappeared into the hallway.

She looked to Eyal for some sort of help.

"I'm sorry." He supplied earnestly. "With you two being… I assumed you would have read him in."

"I didn't want him involved in this."

"But you had no difficulty involving me?" He asked. The deeper meaning in the question only thinly veiled.

"This isn't the time Eyal."

"That's the problem with timing. In this line of work you so frequently die before that perfect time ever comes around."

She looked at him lying there with IV lines and monitors hooked to him and couldn't quite escape the truth behind what he was saying. "I let you in on this because I trust you. I trust you to do what's right, I trust you to help me, I trust you to watch my back."

"You don't expect me to believe that you don't also have that trust in your boyfriend."

"You know I do. The difference is…" She looked like she felt guilty even saying it. "I know it's not his fault that he can't be there, but every time the bullets are flying, a car is exploding, I'm repelling down an elevator shaft, or dodging a tail down busy streets, you're the one that has always been there beside me, the one that time and experience have shown that I can trust to get us through it and to make the tough calls."

He looked at her, slightly stunned at the admission.

"Don't read too much into it. Just because you make a better work husband…"

He smiled at her. "Go to him. See what damage you can repair."

She smiled back at him. "Thank you. I'll come back later."

"I know you will, Neshama."

She gave him a raised eyebrow.

"It's all about the end game." He smiled knowingly back at her and closed his eyes as he rested his head against the pillow.

She gave his hand one more little squeeze before leaving the room.

**A/N: This is only the beginning… Except I'm going to finish Next Tuesday before I take this one any further. My poor little brain just can't handle two different serials at once. The goal for this one is to address that mysterious file and see if there isn't a way to make Annie/Eyal work out after all, while keeping everybody in character and canon. Sounds like fun? Let me know if you think it's worth the effort of continuing. Reviews = Love!**


End file.
